When Leaning Into Easy is Really HardPicture this: it is Sunday afternoon and you are relaxing on the couch living the good life. All is well, until you begin to hear a voice in your head telling you you should be out enjoying the beautiful weather, not inside relaxing. I was chatting with a dear friend about this specific form of discomfort experienced by so many of us, and how difficult it can be to break free from - even if in your heart of hearts you want to be able to. It got me thinking about how the process of getting to a place that is more aligned with our values often feels REALLY BAD. If you have taken the same path in the forest 500 times and one day realize you’re not loving the destination anymore, the unbeaten path to a new destination is not going to feel familiar in the same way that your old path did. I think that acknowledgement is really important, so that we don’t mistake the discomfort of clearing a new path as confirmation that we shouldn’t be changing paths at all.
Let’s get back to our example of a sunny Sunday afternoon and imagine you have decided you want to be able to fully relax inside and feel good about it. So you put on one of your favourite movies and get cozy. Ten minutes in, discomfort sets in and a voice pops up, urging you to go outside instead of “wasting the day”.
If you take this discomfort as a sign that it is, in fact, impossible for you to enjoy relaxing when it’s nice out, you will probably hit pause and head out begrudgingly. If, on the other hand, you take a moment to acknowledge this voice by saying “thank you so much for voicing what you think is best for me. What taking care of myself looks like today is to keep watching this movie I love. This feels pretty uncomfortable, not because this change is bad, but because I’m doing something that is new and unfamiliar”. How does this relate to my work as a dietitian?1) When someone is making changes with food or movement, it can be really confusing to feel all in intellectually, and yet finding the changes INCREDIBLY treacherous. For example, someone may believe that the amount they are exercising is stressful for their body, and yet finding it excruciating to decrease it. I want you to know that this tension makes you human, not flawed. 2) When we are forging new paths, we all have moments of simply not possessing the energy needed to keep clearing out fallen branches and leaves. Moments where we need the familiarity of our old path. This could look like leaning on the comfort of restriction instead of following our nutrition plan. This could look like purging, or bingeing. Whatever it may be, I hope thinking about it in this way allows you to access compassion for yourself, as you picture yourself taking respite on a path you know well.
|
